One Night - Softcover

Dickey, Eric Jerome

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451471717 ISBN 13: 9780451471710

Verlag: Dutton, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

A pair of strangers has twelve hours to relish the night of their lives in a novel that “has taken the anonymous one-night-stand relationship into the realm of art” (Publishers Weekly) from New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey.

On a cold and rainy night during the Christmas season, a woman who has suffered great personal loss and a successful businessman from Orange County meet by chance at a gas station in Los Angeles County. They have nothing in common, but as they engage in conversation and move from con games to assault to robberies, within hours they end up sequestered in an upscale hotel room. During intimacy, they continue to confide in each other and try to come to grips with their problems and their seasonal loneliness. For one night, their passion is boundless, but with every tick of the clock, their separate pasts close in. They push the limits of time, devotion, and even the law as they attempt to catch a glimpse of the future. They need each other for a lifetime but will have only one night.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Eric Jerome Dickey (1961–2021) was the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of twenty-nine novels, as well as a six-issue miniseries of graphic novels featuring Storm (X-Men) and the Black Panther. His novel Sister, Sister was honored as one of Essence’s “50 Most Impactful Black Books of the Last 50 Years,” and A Wanted Woman won the NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Literary Work in 2014. His most recent novels include The Blackbirds, Finding Gideon, Bad Men and Wicked Women, Before We Were Wicked, The Business of Lovers, and The Son of Mr. Suleman.

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6:31 P.M.

. . . and then sirens interrupted my unlawful transaction. Law enforcement sped in our direction. I winced, cursed, and shivered. The Hawaiian Gardens Police Department and the sheriff’s department were coming to arrest me. The abruptness of the sound of so many sirens caused my body to shake, caused adrenaline to rush, triggered my fight-or-flight mode. The prolonged scream of sirens became louder. Came closer.

The darkness that had arrived long before five o’clock in the afternoon deepened as a perpetual winter rain, cold as ice cubes, intensified the misery on this frigid, colorless night.

I turned and confronted the man in the expensive gray suit. He was tense, twitching as if he had also experienced the sudden heat that comes from fear, from fight-or-flight, but a man dressed like he was would never have anything to run from. He looked like he knew the cops were coming here.

I snapped, “Are you with the police? Are you a friggin’ cop?”

Winter rain was being spat from the miserable skies, traffic was bumper to bumper; there was no way I could get to the truck that fast, nowhere to run, and the sirens called my name as they sped closer.

Closer.

The truck. They were coming for me because of the goddamn truck.

Brow furrowed, the well-dressed man made fists and turned toward the incessant wails.

I wasn’t ready for this. I didn’t have an exit plan, not under these conditions.

A winter storm had been going since morning and had caused at least six hundred traffic accidents in three hours; at least five of those were within spitting distance. Traffic was a bitch with PMS, and all the diehards were out Christmas shopping. Cars, SUVs, pickup trucks, minivans, and hearses clogged the entrance to the Long Beach Towne Center, Hawaiian Gardens Casino, and every strip mall that made up this waterlogged city. That made it impossible for me to get back in my ride and speed away. And if I did manage to get to the truck, the world before me crept toward the 605 at three miles per hour, and traffic heading in the opposite direction on Carson Boulevard couldn’t be breaking five.

And as the sirens sang, my frustration was like a slow ride to hell in a flooding dystopia.

Closer. Closer.

He remained tense, his jaw tight, not blinking, his body language speaking of nothing but trouble.

This was unexpected. Fear arrested me. I almost let my weapon slide down to my hand.

Closer. Closer. Closer.

Patrol cars sped by with their fiery lights flashing, raced toward Lakewood, toward Long Beach. We were underneath the shelter between two gas pumps. Behind us was a nonstop line of traffic, a line that stretched both in the direction of the 605 freeway and deeper into Hawaiian Gardens.

The man in the suit took a hard breath, opened and closed his right hand, his face thunderous

Voice trembling, feeling my fear, I asked, “Now, where were we?”

“You parked your truck and came to me with an interesting proposition.”

“I can let the MacBook Pro I have go for seven hundred. Cash.”

He said, “Really? Seven hundred dollars for a stolen MacBook Pro?”

“Once again, it’s the fifteen-inch, and this sells at the Apple Store for over two thousand dollars. If you get it for seven hundred, you’ve saved at least thirteen hundred.”

“You don’t save money by spending money.”

“Well, that’ll never be on a billboard on Sunset Boulevard. Saving is bad for the economy.”

“Really? You’re expecting to get that much for a stolen computer that has no warranty?”

“Well, how much are you willing to give me?”

“One hundred dollars.”

“Dude, you’re crazy. This has the latest-generation Intel processors, all-new graphics, faster flash storage, and retina display. This bad boy has over five million pixels. That’s better than HDTV. The battery lasts up to eight hours. Don’t tell me you’re a PC guy? You look too hip to be a PC guy.”

His left eye was bruised. Maybe he had been mugged, or involved in a Christmas brawl. Customers throw hard blows for two-dollar holiday sales at Walmart, and there was one up the street, its lot packed—but his suit and car were made for Rodeo Drive. He considered something beyond me, glanced at the battered old white Nissan truck I was driving.

He said, “Best Buy sent you to do deliveries in that truck?”

“I had to drive my own vehicle tonight. Company cutbacks.”

A few minutes earlier I had driven from my resting spot by the Towne Center and the Edwards Cinema into a Chevron station. There were seventeen gas pumps, all but three occupied, and the twenty-four-hour Subway attached to the gas station was just as busy. I had pulled up to pump number 17, stopping opposite pump number 12 and a brother in a modern gray suit. When I eased out of the truck, he was holding his gas hose, his shoulders hunched like he’d never been rained on in his life. I put on a cheerleader smile, walked halfway to him—bouncy and perky like Katie Couric—told him that his whip was very nice—used that praise as an opener—then engaged him with a flirty smile and started a conversation. I eased closer, whispered that I had a MacBook to sell, asked him if he might be interested in a deal. He had paused, inspected me. My wig was long and loose, like a bad-hair day, and I wore a stolen yellow polo shirt and Dockers that had come at the same five-finger discount, both too big, and a stolen Best Buy badge on my jean jacket. He stepped closer and asked me to repeat what I had said. I told him I had a new laptop in the truck, asked him if he wanted to buy it before I sold it to someone else. I told him the price. Then sirens had echoed and passed. Now we were back to haggling in the rain.

He evaluated me from shoes to eyes and asked, “Are you Egyptian?”

“Am I Egyptian? Are we in Egypt?”

“You look Egyptian.”

“I’m part broke and part black, all mixed with hard times and frustration.”

He looked down his nose at my uniform, my face. “Your tongue is pierced.”

“Yeah. So what?”

“What do you do at Best Buy?”

“That’s not important. You want to buy the MacBook or not?”

A frigid breeze kicked in and chilled his condescending attitude.

His phone buzzed. He held it up, read a message, then scowled at the traffic.

I asked, “Need to go so soon?”

“A long text message from my wife.”

“You okay? Look like you just received bad news.”

“She’s just arrived at a hospital.”

“Is she okay?”

“Distraught. Family friend had an accident. Someone close to both our families.”

“Do you need to go to her?”

“I’m not a doctor. Nothing I can do but watch her break down and cry.”

“Need to text her back?”

“She’s type-A, not a woman that many men can date, let alone marry, because she is always stressed out. She will have a fit if I don’t respond right away. For her, everything’s urgent. So I won’t.”

“Type-A. She’s the type of person who loves to win at everything.”

“She is.”

“You know how she is, and you’re going to leave her anxious. That’s cold.”

“Cold like winter in Siberia.”

“So do you want the computer or not? You’re making me miss out on other...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Dutton
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0451471717
• ISBN 13: 9780451471710
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Dutton; https://www.penguin.com/dutton-childrens-overview/; ; Im Mittelfeld 25; K?ln; Deutschland; 51105; Deutschland